The game of darts is traditionally an English pub game in which each player takes turns throwing 3 steel-tipped throwing devices (i.e., “darts”) at various targets on a bristle board containing 20 segments and bulls eye. The two primary games played in the United States are titled '01 (“oh-one”) and Cricket.
Historically, scoring was done on chalkboards and more recently, dry erase boards. Although electronic wall-mounted score machines have been developed, they can be expensive and many have a steep learning curve. Furthermore, electronic soft tip machines use special darts and special scoreboards to automatically record scores when the darts hit the board. These are akin to video games, often requiring money for each game and requiring players go to specific establishments having such scoreboards.
Additionally, dart software programs (i.e., applications) typically have a narrow focus and their interfaces tend to be technical and difficult to learn as they do not conform to the typical chalkboard/dry erase board scoring system. Team/league and tournament play is especially challenging to accommodate in such software due to the nature of match format variations and group play.
Many additional factors have prevented easy-to-use modern scoring systems from being developed and/or widely accepted. A first of these is math. Scoring a dart game is prone to math errors, which at a minimum slows game play and often results in incorrect scores. It is this particular pain point that is credited for giving rise to the soft-tip electronic vending game industry described above, impacting the popularity of the steel tipped game. A second factor is the existing electronic scoreboards, which, as stated, can be intimidating or confusing, especially for the uninitiated. Confirming and editing recent scores can be very difficult on these systems, due to a lack of instructions. Furthermore, interfaces vary dramatically from traditional chalk board scoring. A third preventing modern scoring systems from wide acceptance is that darts is a hard game to watch. For example, teammates and spectators often struggle with seeing the current score of the match due to legibility, lighting, positioning, and space restrictions. This often prevents spectators from keeping up with the status of a live game. A fourth problem is finding opponents & creating opportunities to play. As with scheduling any joint activity, the logistics of finding an agreeable time and a common meeting point, while managing the personal commitments in life, can make playing darts a challenge. A fifth issue are game rule variations. There are dozens of niche dart games and practice routines with rule variations. The result is that there are hundreds of possibilities of game types, with even identical games going by different names depending on geography. This difference creates decreased accuracy. Player performance also limits acceptance. Players are not familiar with ways to measure their performance as current player performance measurement tools require additional manual calculations after every game or match and is especially tedious for cricket-based games.